Author: Big Mama

  • Step away from the grab-its

    In my opinion, one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century was the Pledge Grab-it. Y’all know what I’m talking about, those little electromagnetic cloths that catch all the dust? Some people use the Swiffer version, but they all serve the same function of getting dust and dirt off your floor that is barely visible to the naked eye.

    We have all wood floors and I have a child and a husband that like to play in the dirt, so needless to say my floors get dirty. I sweep in the kitchen once a day since that’s our biggest high traffic area. Then, after I sweep, if I really want to give the floors that extra something special, I will use the Grab-its.

    I know that everyone is on the edge of their seat to see where this post is going.

    Me too.

    We have a housekeeper that comes every other week. I realize that I am blessed to have someone to clean my house twice a month, and truly I am grateful for those Fridays that I know the house will be really clean through no effort of my own. It’s like a little present all wrapped up with a big bow.

    She is actually more like a member of the family, seeing as how she is the same housekeeper that P’s mama has used since he was a little boy. In fact, at this moment, she cleans P’s mama’s house, his sister’s house, Mimi and Bop’s house and my house.

    We like to keep it all in the family.

    Anyway, every other Friday, Cata shows up, drinks her coffee, listens while Caroline talks her ear off and then starts cleaning the house. Here is where the problem lies.

    Cata is a Grab-it-aholic.

    She opens up the first pack at 8 a.m. and by 8:45 has burned through it like she’s in a race to rid the world of all electromagnetic dust cloths. By 10:15, another stash of Grab-its has literally bit the dust and at 11:00, she’s asking me to go to the store to buy more Grab-its.

    Cata has a fever and the only cure is more Grab-its.

    My home is not that dirty.

    No one’s home is that dirty.

    I’m afraid Cata is giddy with the dust wielding power of the Grab-it and it’s time for us to take a step back and re-evaluate our cleaning arsenal. At this rate, we’re not going to be able to afford to keep her because keeping her supplied in Grab-its is taking a huge chunk of our savings, and if we’re going to be blowing through money like that, it needs to go to a good cause, like new summer sandals.

    However, since I am such a confrontational person, I haven’t had the nerve to just say no. Cata asks me for the Grab-its and I continue to be an enabler. But it’s got to stop.

    I asked P’s sister if she has had a problem with Cata’s Grab-it abuse and she said no, because at her house Cata became all strung out on the Windex wipes. Her advice was to hide the Grab-its in a secret spot, which has helped her cure Cata of the Windex wipe addiction.

    At this point, I’ll try anything. I’ve just got to get her down to one pack a day.

  • An attitude of gratitude

    I am a little behind on my television viewing, which makes me realize that I really need to re-evaluate my priorities. Anyway, on Sunday, I recorded all the Academy Award pre-show festivities so that I could watch them later, and then by the time I got Caroline into bed, I just wanted to watch the actual awards and skipped through all the other stuff.

    I watched the Academy Awards and felt like something was missing, which I later realized was due to the fact that I didn’t watch the Barbara Walters special beforehand. It’s just not the same if you haven’t seen a celebrity cry on Barbara’s shoulder right before the show. Thankfully, I had a little spare time last night and was able to get all caught up on the celebrity display of waterworks.

    Her first interview was with Ellen DeGeneres. I really like Ellen DeGeneres. I remember seeing her on Comedy Central when I was in college and thinking she was hysterical. I love her dry humor, her warmth and her style. And don’t even get me started on how much I love her as the voice of Dory in Finding Nemo.

    Anyway, Ellen was talking about the ups and downs of her career and her life. She has had some huge successes, but she’s also had some really painful things that have happened along the way. At one point in the interview, they showed a clip of her first appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson where she did a thing about calling God on the phone. I remembered seeing it years ago and it was great.

    At the end of the interview, Barbara Walters asked Ellen what she would say to God if she really could call Him on the phone and Ellen got very teary-eyed (of course, it’s Barbara Walters) and said with such sincerity, ” I’d say thank you. I’ve got nothing but gratitude. My whole life, I’m so blessed. I’m so lucky and I feel it every day”.

    Her words convicted me so much that I turned off the T.V.

    I don’t know what Ellen’s religious beliefs are and that’s not the point. The point is her overwhelming gratitude at the life she has been given. She recognizes her blessings and it made me ask myself if I’m as quick to recognize all of mine, or do I let myself get consumed with the other things I want?

    When I pray, which is really the same as a phone call to God, how much time do I spend thanking Him for all He has already done in my life? Do I tell Him that I realize He’s blessed me more than I’ve ever deserved and honestly, if He never did one thing for me other than sending His son 2,000 years ago to die on a cross, that’s more than I could ever repay?

    I would never call up my friends every day and say, “Let me tell you what you can do for me today” and I’m betting if I did, it wouldn’t be long before they started screening my calls. If someone does something nice for me, I am quick to tell them thank you, after all, that’s just good manners. I’d never say, “Well, that’s nice, but if you really want to help me you could…”.

    As a mama, I spend lots of time reminding Caroline to say thank you. I tell her that’s what nice people do, we say thank you when people do something for us so they know that they are appreciated.

    Why am I so quick to tell the cashier at HEB thank you for the Buddy Bucks, but so slow to tell God thank you for giving me the air that I breathe, the family that I love, the friends that I adore, and the life that is so much more blessed than I deserve?

    I never thought I’d say that watching a Barbara Walters special caused me to have a spiritual revelation, but it did. Ellen’s words made me take a look at myself and caused me to stop and just tell Him, thank you.

    “Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle.

    They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away.
    Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
    He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle.
    Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men,
    for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. “

    Psalm 107: 4-9

  • BM…doesn’t just stand for Big Mama

    I really don’t want this turn into a forum that discusses nothing but my daughter’s bowel movements because I’m assuming that would cause many of y’all to go away and never come back. And understandably so.

    It just seems that lately, we have had an abundance of poop at our house. In fact, we haven’t had this much poop since the time Caroline was about eight months old and I fed her strained prunes because I was afraid she was constipated, and then made a serious miscalculation and put her in the johnny jump up.

    For the record, laxative inducing fruit products and jumping…not a good combination.

    The other day we were over at Gulley’s house playing and Caroline started calling for me. I went in the bathroom and she had pooped. We took care of business and then she went running back into Jackson’s room. She was so proud of herself and yelled “Jackson, I just had poop and my poop is BISGUSTING”.

    And she’s right, her poop is disgusting. However, I think it will serve her well as she grows older to realize that you don’t necessarily want to share this information with your boyfriends.

    Then, today she was outside playing and had an accident in her pants. Let’s just say that her new Hello Kitty underwear became Goodbye Kitty in the blink of an eye.

  • I’d like to thank myself for making these delicious chocolate chip cookies

    Well, I’m sure it won’t surprise most of y’all in the least to know that I had a big, exclusive Oscar viewing party at the house last night. In fact, it was so exclusive that the only person in attendance was me. I was seriously living by the philosophy that I am my own best friend.

    Such a fancy party obviously requires fancy food and clothes. I put on my best Gap flannel pajama pants and went vintage with a sweatshirt from a college Christmas formal.

    My sophomore year in college.

    A 1992 college formal.

    Add a headband and a clippy to keep my hair out of my face and the word you’re looking for is FABULOUS. Beyonce had nothing on me.

    Obviously, food is the cornerstone of any big party, but it’s hard to decide what fits such an important viewing occasion. In the end, I went with a combination of Sour Patch Kids and chocolate chip cookies. Variety really is the spice of life.

    I was hoping that there would be a lot of good material, but really other than Ellen DeGeneres’ doing a really good job of hosting, there just isn’t much to report. Of course, some of that could be due to the fact that of all the movies nominated, I have seen two. Little Miss Sunshine and Dreamgirls. I’d like to lie and say the reason I’ve only seen those two is due to time constraints, but the truth is, all of the others don’t look good to me.

    Well, except maybe The Queen. I mean really, who can’t get enough of the royal family? It’s not like they’re featured every week in People Magazine or anything.

    Call me unsophisticated, but I just don’t care about seeing movies that involve war torn countries or vast governmental conspiracies or British butlers and maids (unless maybe they’re singing and dancing). I go to the movies to be entertained. If I want to be bored or depressed I can turn on CNN for free.

    I guess this explains why the three best things about last night’s Oscars for me were Ellen getting Steven Spielberg to take her picture with Clint Eastwood, Will Ferrell and Jack Black singing about going home with Helen Mirren and fighting Mark Wahlberg, and Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson just flat singing.

    I’ve never claimed to be a complicated person. It’s all about the simple moments for me. And since I was watching all by myself, I didn’t have to pretend to be any different or share my chocolate chip cookies.

  • You are now entering the construction zone

    Since our neighbor Tillie died almost three years ago, her former home has undergone several changes. One of the problems with living in an older neighborhood is builders are constantly on the lookout for an older home that they can buy, update and resell for an absurdly high price. And because our quaint little neighborhood is about twenty years behind on adopting a set of building codes to set limits as to what you can build or how big it can be, you never quite know what you’re going to get when people start building and remodeling on your street. Our biggest fear is that someone will come in and build an enormous home next to ours and people will drive by and think our house is the servants’ quarters for the house next door.

    Anyway, my point is Tillie’s house has already had two different buyers. The first family that bought it did so for the sole purpose of renovating it and reselling it, which would have been great, except they had the taste of a Las Vegas showgirl.

    This could have been due to the fact that the wife of the husband had actually been a Las Vegas showgirl before she found her wealthy husband sitting at a Blackjack table somewhere in Vegas.

    Remodeling Tillie’s house was apparently some type of family project and the Vegas showgirl, her husband and their four kids would show up every Sunday to work on the house. Before long, Tillie’s cute little rock cottage had a huge, black awning over the front door that made it look like a funeral parlor. The next thing we knew they had planted little fir trees all along the side yard. We live in South Texas, so those fir trees were gasping for air when the temperature hit 85 in March, and by July they were little dehydrated specimens consisting of dead branches and brown leaves. They looked like Christmas trees on crack. It was just sad.

    It became kind of a hobby for P and me to keep an eye on all the various ways they were desecrating Tillie’s house. Some days, P would call me on my cell phone and ask “Did they have the picnic table with the huge Coca-Cola umbrella up before you left the house this morning?” And I would gasp and say “Shut UP!” and he would say he wished he were kidding.

    The best day was the day the former Vegas showgirl showed up wearing spandex bike shorts and a sports bra, pulled a chainsaw out of the back of her car, and proceeded to attempt to cut down a pecan tree that was at least three feet in diameter. P and I watched in fascinated horror as she wielded that chainsaw with all the skill and grace of a drunk monkey and held our breath as we noticed the tree beginning to lean precariously toward our other neighbor’s garage. It was the best free entertainment anyone could hope for on a Monday morning.

    Our other favorite thing about these neighbors was that the dad was a real friendly sort of fellow and anytime we were out in our yard he would feel free to walk over and talk to us about how we needed to have another baby or that he noticed P drove a Ford truck and had he mentioned that he didn’t really like Ford trucks. He always looked sharp in his own pair of bike shorts (and nothing else) with his thick, gold chain draped elegantly around his sweaty neck. He also was constantly trying to lead us to Jesus by saying things like “Whoo! I’m out of breath from planting those fir trees and speaking of, you know the Bible says that man’s life is but a breath”.

    One day I asked P if he thought we should just tell bike short dad that we were Christians so that he could save his efforts, but we agreed it was too entertaining to listen to all the ways he tried to witness to us. “I notice you only have one child, but you know the Lord says that blessed is the man whose quiver is full”. I thought blessed was the man who gets to sleep eight hours at night with no interruption and having only one child is helping me take a step in that direction.

    About a year ago, this family sold the house to an older couple who informed us that their plan was to renovate the new renovation which thankfully, included removing the black awning from the front door. They said that they wanted to really downsize now that the kids were out of the house, and they just needed something small like say, 2500 square feet. Oh what a great idea! Hopefully the two of you will be able to live in something that is bigger than our entire house including our garage.

    Anyway, last week I woke up and was sure that our entire neighborhood must be under siege. There were horrendously loud noises coming from somewhere nearby, the dogs were cowering under the table and the windows in our house were rattling as if they would break at any moment. I looked out the back door to see a dumpster being dropped in Tillie’s old backyard, jackhammers eliminating her old back porch, and a concrete truck pouring fresh concrete to make a foundation for something that by the size of the concrete slab will be anything but quaint.

    Oh yes, we are now living in the construction zone.

    This is the view from our back porch this morning.

    It’s hard to pick my favorite blue accessory adorning the lot, but the bright blue port-a-potty is certainly the front runner. It warms my heart to know that construction workers are able to relieve themselves not even ten feet from my back porch.

  • An apple a day and let the music play

    I have to share with y’all, today is a momentous occasion that must be documented. I am composing this post on my brand new MacBook. Oh yes, I have joined the world of Apple and all its loveliness.

    P and I (well actually just me, because P really couldn’t care less about computers other than going online occasionally to purchase ammo and camoflauge backpacks) were on the verge of making this life changing purchase about three weeks ago and then I got the call from my manager letting me know that I might be getting fired and since we are discerning and wise, we realized it might not be the best time to make such a purchase.

    However, we were living in dire, desperate computing circumstances here, with our old Windows system and a CPU that sounded like it might explode at any time due to sheer exhaustion from running a completely antiquated system. Y’all may think I’m exaggerating, but let me tell you there were some mornings that we turned on the computer (we always turned it off at night because we seriously believed it could be a fire hazard) and an alarm would start beeping to let us know that it was HOT! and the FAN! WASN’T! WORKING! and we always did what any really tech savvy person would do and just hit a bunch of keys on the keyboard until the noise stopped, because P and I both knew that if I couldn’t get on the computer, my eye would start to twitch and it would just be a matter of time before I was in full blown withdrawal.

    We were living in computer denial.

    But now, we have seen the light, repented of our computer processing sins, and laid our checkbook on the altar of Apple.

    I thought long and hard about what my first post would be on my fancy new computer, but between watching and worrying about Meredith Grey possibly being dead and then finding out who got voted off American Idol, I just couldn’t come up with anything of great blogging substance.

    However, earlier this week I saw this meme that DeeDee over at It Coulda’ Been Worse made up and knew it would just be a matter of time before it called to me. If nothing else, it will make me think about songs I’d like to upload to my iPod, which now looks so perfect sitting next to my MacBook.

    And the fact that I just said that means that literally, I have technically turned into a geek. My music choices will just confirm my membership into the less than cool club.

    Favorite Song From Childhood: Seriously, if there were a soundtrack of my childhood I feel like there are two voices I would hear: Jimmy Swaggart and Willie Nelson. The polar opposites of the musical spectrum.

    It seems like I was either listening to “The Old Rugged Cross” or “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”. That being said, the song that always takes me back to childhood is hearing Willie sing “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys”.

    Favorite High School Dance Song: Get out your banana clip, tease those bangs, throw on your Guess jeans and prepare to get your groove on to “It Takes Two” by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock . WHOO! YEAH!

    Senior Class Song: It pains me to say that it was the schmaltz that is Whitney Houston singing “One Moment In Time”. When I think back to my senior class, the only moment in time we needed was a sober one. Everyone just step away from the Boones Farm Strawberry Hill.

    Favorite Rock & Roll Song: I know that Van Halen has had their issues with David Lee Roth and then no David Lee and then Sammy Hagar and then David Lee Roth again, but I unashamedly love me some Van Halen. “Why Can’t this Be Love?” will have me singing at the top of my lungs every time. That’s right, I said it.

    And just so I don’t lose all credibility and embarass P to no end, I also love The Rolling Stones, especially “Brown Sugar”.

    Favorite Disco Song: I’m not sure it qualifies as disco but I love “Sing a Song” by Earth, Wind and Fire.

    Favorite Country Western Song: “Marina Del Rey” or just about anything by George Strait because he is the best there has ever been.

    Favorite Pop Song: At the moment I love “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall. It’s a happy springtime song that almost makes me okay with the fact that it’s 80 degrees outside in February.

    Favorite All Time Love Song: “The Way You Look Tonight” sung by Tony Bennett. If it’s not Tony singing, then there just isn’t as much love.

    Favorite Break Up Song: “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinead O’Connor. If the interior of my car that I drove in high school (a sweet, sweet Honda CRX) could talk, I would be shamed for anyone to know how many times I cried over various ex-boyfriends to this song.

    Favorite Make Out Song: I’m sorry, but when I see the words make out song, all that comes to mind is Richie Cunningham on Happy Days singing “I found my thrills on blueberry hill…”

    Song That Always Makes You Cry: “Lullaby” by The Dixie Chicks because it is one of the sweetest songs ever and captures a mama’s heart.

    Songs About Your Kid/s: “Sweet Caroline” is the obvious choice and I do adore the song. The other song is “Fly Me to the Moon” because it was the song that I sang more than any other as I rocked her in the middle of the night.

    And one more that will always make me think of Caroline is a worship song called “You Are So Good to Me” because the chorus says “You are beautiful, my sweet, sweet song…” and the first night we were home from the hospital, P and I were eating dinner that someone had brought over and Caroline was this sweet, pink bundle in her bassinet and that song was playing and when it got to the chorus, I put my head down in my meatloaf and cried because I felt so blessed. And yes, I was probably also slightly hormonal.

    Song That Reminds You Of Your Husband: P and I have never been the kind of couple that has a song. We just aren’t really like that. We also call each other by our last name instead of honey or baby or whatever. We’re not a schmoopy kind of couple, NOT that there is anything wrong with that.

    So, all of that to say that the song that will always remind me of P is “Cowboy Take Me Away” by the Dixie Chicks, not because he is a cowboy (although there is a nasty rumor going around that before I met him he used to wear Wranglers and perhaps a belt with his name on the back) but because it just makes me remember all the things I love about him.

    Favorite Gospel/Praise Song: This is a hard one to narrow down, but I’ll just name two. “Unashamed Love” by Ten Shekel Shirt and lately, “How Can I Keep from Singing” by Chris Tomlin.

    Favorite Ringtone on Cellphone: Honestly, I’m not a fan of the song ringtone because then I end up hating the song. I’m a plain old Cingular ringtone kind of girl.

    I’m not going to tag anyone, but if it looks like fun, then hit me with your best shot a la Pat Benatar.

    Hope y’all have a great weekend!